Rehtaeh Parsons was 15 when the then-17-year-old young man sent a photo of him having sex with her to two other females. Parsons was apparently unaware she was being sexually assaulted. The photo showed not only the young man's actions, but her vomiting out a window.

The subsequent distribution of these photos, along with additional harassment from both the participants and Parsons' peers, eventually led to her suicide. Her suicide then prompted Nova Scotia's legislators to enact an extremely unfortunate cyberbullying law in late 2013, nearly two years after the incident and four months after Parsons took her own life.

In May of 2014, the legally-ordained ban was upheld, forbidding anyone or any media entity from publishing Parsons' name, despite objections from Rehtaeh's parents, who were actively seeking an exception from this part of Canada's child pornography laws. But the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had decided to pursue child pornography charges rather than sexual assault charges and the resulting indictments dragged Retaeh's name under the cover of this ban.

The Chronicle Herald's story on the guilty plea entered by of one of the two perpetrators (whose names are still being withheld because they were minors at the time) leads off with this editor's note:

We’ve decided to publish the name of the victim in this story, despite a court-ordered ban. We believe it’s in the public interest in this unique case, given the widespread recognition of Rehtaeh Parsons’ name, and given the good that can come, and has already come, from free public debate over sexual consent and the other elements of her story.

Rehtaeh’s parents want her name printed, and Judge Jamie Campbell, who upheld the publication ban, wrote in his decision that “the ban serves no purpose,” though he had no choice but to uphold it. Waiving Rehtaeh’s privacy rights “would be a good thing, if it could be done just for this case, just this once,” the judge wrote.

It is difficult for readers to follow a news story when the name associated with it is omitted, and we want to inform Nova Scotians of the outcome of this legal case. We would like to reassure other crime victims that their own court-ordered privacy rights will be respected as always.

As is noted here, Parsons' parents fought to keep her from being "forgotten" by this ban, but to no avail. The Parsons' have given their blanket permission for publication, but that has had no effect on whatever sort of busybody it is that reads this disclaimer and still files a complaint. An accompanying story notes that the Chronicle Herald is being investigated by local law enforcement.

Police have launched an investigation into a possible breach of a publication ban after a major news outlet in Halifax published the name of a teenage girl at the centre of a high-profile child pornography case.

Const. Pierre Bourdages said Tuesday that they had received several reports from citizens complaining about the use of the girl’s name, which is subject to a publication ban under the Criminal Code.

“There’s already been a number of complaints filed with the department in relation to this article,” he said.

“There’s an alleged breach of the publication ban … so we have an investigation ongoing now.”

Now, it would seem that the only party with any true claim over Parsons' name would be her parents, but apparently, certain members of the public feel otherwise. The good news is that this isn't the police's first run-in with the publication ban and they seem to be handling other cases in a responsible manner using context and common sense, rather than blindly asserting that "The law is the law" and punishing those who violate the letter, rather than the spirit.

“Investigators considered whether the victim’s name was used in connection with the child pornography charges as well as the overall context in which her name was used,” police said in a statement.

Based on that and consultation with the Crown, charges were not laid, police said.

Even the prosecutor seems uninterested in laying charges just to be laying charges.

Chris Hansen of the province’s Public Prosecution Service said they consulted police in the seven previous instances, but concluded that there was either not a likely chance of conviction or that if there was, it was not in the public interest to pursue it.

She said they considered several factors, including the past publicity and widespread publication of her name, the wishes of her family to have her name published and the possibility that it would facilitate public debate on a “serious societal issue.”

It's refreshing to see this recognition that the law isn't always binary. The Parsons' have repeatedly stated they don't want their daughter's name removed from additional coverage of this case. The judge upholding the ban also noted that exceptions were needed but wasn't something that could be handled from the court's end. Meddling citizens with no actual stake in the matter may be trying to make things more difficult for the press by complaining about ban violations, but so far it appears they won't be receiving any help from those actually charged with enforcing the law.

from the ouch dept

We've been among those who have pointed out that the "most transparent administration in history," the Obama administration, has prosecuted media leakers more than all other Presidents in history combined (eight prosecutions in this administration, compared to three total in all previous administrations). Gabe Rottman, over at the ACLU, decided to dig into another stat: how much time has the Obama administration been able to lock up media leakers in jail compared to all other administrations. The answer? The Obama administration has put folks who leaked info to the media in jail for 526 months as compared to 24 months for all other Presidents combined. Admittedly, 420 of those months went to Chelsea Manning, but even if you take that out, we're still talking 106 months for other leakers in cases from this one administration vs. 24 months for all other administrations.

It once again has to make you wonder why the Obama Administration is so focused on punishing anyone who leaks information to the media (even as it likes to "unofficially" leak information all the time). In the end, I keep going back to the speculation I heard from Daniel Ellsberg nearly four years ago (which is also where I first heard the stat about the number of Obama prosecutions against leakers -- at that time, it was just five prosecutions, rather than eight).

Ellsberg's theory was that while President Bush abused the power of the Presidency in the surveillance realm, he was actually proud of it. And while people were upset about secrets leaking, they didn't find it embarrassing. President Obama, on the other hand, came into office claiming to be different -- arguing against those kinds of abuses and promising changes and protections for civil rights. Instead, it appears that the process started under President Bush continued and expanded under President Obama and -- Ellsberg speculated years ago -- the President is somewhat embarrassed by this, leading him and his administration to react negatively to the leaks. Not because of any legitimate security concern, but to try to silence those who seek to reveal that the administration and the President have not come close to living up to their ideals but rather went the other way entirely.

Putting those who leaked info to the media in jail for 526 months -- nearly 44 years -- says a lot about the way the administration truly views whistleblowing, and it's not a saying anything good.

from the is-this-really-so-hard? dept

I had honestly hoped that yesterday's story about the Huffington Post finally retracting its series of totally bogus articles (mostly written by Shiva Ayyadurai or his colleagues and friends, but a few by its actual "journalists"), pretending to argue that V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai had "invented email," would be the end of this story. Ayyadurai has built up quite a reputation around this false claim, even though it's been debunked over and over and over again.

Ayyadurai keeps coming back, often moving the goalposts and changing his definitions, but still ultimately flat out lying in pretending to have "invented" email. To be clear, he did no such thing. Email was in wide use at the time he supposedly wrote his software. Ayyadurai, however, has cleverly used misleading (to downright false) claims to make what appears on its face to be a credible story, fooling a number of gullible reporters. The crux of his argument revolves around the copyright registration he obtained for a software program in 1982 called EMAIL. But, as we've explained over and over again, a copyright is just for a specific expression (i.e., that specific program), and not for "inventing" anything. The most obvious parallel would be Microsoft, which holds a copyright on "Windows" -- the operating system -- but did not "invent" the idea of a graphical user interface involving "windows."

And yet, yesterday morning, everyone began flooding me with new stories about Ayyadurai, written by clueless entertainment reporters, all because Ayyadurai apparently got married to actress Fran Drescher. The "dating Fran Drescher" story has been making the rounds for a while now, and it was so random and unrelated that we'd ignored it in previous posts, even though one part of the HuffPo series was HuffPo Live talking to Ayyadurai about Drescher, in what was an incredibly awkward exchange (note: despite pulling most of the other articles about Ayyaduria, HuffPo left this one up). In the video (which has been taken down), Ayyadurai made this incredibly awkward "introduction" to Fran, in which he repeatedly highlights that he's just hanging out "in Malibu with Fran," and then says for emphasis "with Fran Drescher, who I'm dating." That leads Fran to jump into view, and the HuffPo live "reporter" Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani starts absolutely gushing over Fran. It was weird, but since it wasn't directly related to whole lie about "inventing email," we hadn't mentioned it.

However, thanks to the "wedding," now it appears that tons of mainstream press reports are writing about the wedding and repeating the totally debunked claim about Ayyadurai "inventing" email. This has resulted in many people wondering if the whole HuffPo series was deliberately ramped up prior to the "wedding" to get the mainstream press to roll with the bogus claim. It's entirely possible, but considering that Ayyadurai has been trying to make this lie stick for years, it may just be a convenient coincidence. Either way, the mainstream press apparently is unable to do any fact checking and is repeating bogus claims as facts. Let's highlight a few:

People Magazine, written by "reporter" Gabrielle Olya, not only falsely claims Ayyadurai invented email, but says he "holds the patent for creating email." This is all kinds of wrong. He doesn't "hold the patent for creating email." He didn't create email, and he only got a copyright (not a patent) on a program called EMAIL long after email had been created. The People Magazine piece links to the bogus, now retracted, HuffPo story.

E-Online "reporter" Mike Vulpo falsely calls Ayyadurai "the inventor of email" and also links to the bogus, now retracted HuffPo story. Even more bizarrely, Vulpo links to the now debunked Washington Post articles from a few years ago (which have a huge correction apologizing for the misreporting on Ayyadurai) saying "reports say he holds the copyright to the computer program known as "email." Others say he indeed came up with the term "email" when he was in high school in the late 1970s. Pretty impressive, right?" I love the hedges "reports say" and "others say" while ignoring the fact that his claims to have "invented" email are debunked. And while this is slightly more accurate in noting that he has a copyright in a program called "email," it's not "the" computer program called EMAIL, which falsely implies it was the first one. Even more bizarrely, this same piece was reposted to "NBC Bay Area." You would think, being in the Bay Area, that they might have reached out to folks actually in the tech industry to debunk Ayyadurai's ridiculous claims.

ABC News / Good Morning America "reporter" Michael Rothman falsely claims that Ayyadurai is the "inventor of email" and makes it even more stupid by saying that Ayyadurai is "widely credited with having invented email." This is not even remotely true. He is only credited with that by himself and a tiny group of friends. Rothman also doesn't appear to understand even the basics of copyright by saying that Ayyadurai is "the first person to hold a copyright for 'EMAIL.'" Again, all he did was write a program called EMAIL, long after email had been invented. It also claims that Ayyadurai "currently teaches at MIT." A search of MIT's staff directory does not actually return Ayyadurai as a current staff member.

CBS News expands their reputation for skipping over any fact checking by saying Ayyadurai "holds the patent for inventing email." Again, basically everything in that statement is wrong. He doesn't have a patent for inventing email. He got a copyright (very different) on a program called EMAIL. And he didn't invent email. At least CBS News is smart enough not to put a byline on this bogus reporting, but it also quotes the Huffington Post.

UPI has an article that doesn't mention Ayyadurai's false claims in the text of the article, but does falsely call him "email creator" in the headline (which may not have been written by the reporter who wrote the article).

The Daily Mail is somewhat famous for its lack of reporting skills and fact checking -- and the publication lives down to its reputation in an article by Chelsea White, which again repeats the myth that Ayyadurai invented email. And while it claims there's "controversy" over the claim (there isn't: everyone except him and his friends know he didn't invent email) it repeats the bogus claim that he has a patent on email: "Dr. Ayyadurai - who owns the patent to email and is often credited as the inventor of the electronic mail system amid some controversy." It also links to the Huffington Post.

US Magazine "reporter" Madeline Boardman more or less repeats verbatim what others are saying about Ayyadurai being "the inventor" of email and that he is "widely credited" as such.

Headline and Global News "reporter" Dina Exil repeatedly calls Ayyadurai the inventor of email and also claims he "is known for being the first person to invent email," except none of that is true. He's known for pretending that.

Popcrush "reporter" Michelle McGahan calls Ayyadurai "the inventor of email" and also falsely claims he "owns the patent for email."

Now, considering that this just some random celebrity gossip, it's not that surprising that these "entertainment reporters" didn't bother to do any sort of fact checking. Why would they? And it's tough to fault them for going for the easy layup on the typical "famous person weds" story. But the problem here is that Ayyadurai has been focused on using any and all press mentions as "evidence" in his bogus campaign to declare himself the inventor of email, and now he has a number of other sources to cite, even though they're all totally wrong.

It is worth noting that not everyone fell for the spin. The LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle both focused mainly on Drescher and more or less ignored Ayyadurai's bogus claims (though, the LA Times does say he's at MIT, which again, does not list him as a current staff member).

The only publications I can find that really called out the bogus claims were Mashable, which noted that Drescher has married someone who "likes to claim he invented email" and Gawker, which noted that if Fran Drescher had actually read its previous articles about Ayyadurai, she might not have married him. What's funny is that in writing our series about the Huffington Post's bogus stories, some of our commenters insisted that this was actually proof as to why these "new media" players weren't trustworthy compared to traditional vetted media. And yet, above we have "trusted" media like ABC and CBS repeating totally false claims, while new media players like Mashable and Gawker are debunking them.

Anyway, I'd like to think this story is now over, but somehow I get the feeling that Ayyadurai will continue to press his bogus claims again and again and again.

from the nyt-failures dept

Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has long been the leading advocate in condemning the prominence of "he said/she said" journalism in the mainstream media. This kind of journalism is driven by a complete distortion of what it means to be an "objective" journalist. Bad journalists seem to think that if someone is making a claim, you present that claim, then you present an opposing claim, and you're done. They think this is objective because they're not "picking sides." But what if one side is batshit crazy and the other is actually making legitimate claims? Shouldn't the job of true journalists be to ferret out the truth and reveal the crazy arguments as crazy? Rosen's latest calls out the NY Times for falling into the bogus "he said/she said" trap yet again. This time it's on an article about plagiarism and copyright infringement charges being leveled from one biographer of Ronald Reagan against another. We wrote about this story as well, and we looked at the arguments of both sides, and then noted that author Craig Shirley's arguments made no sense at all, as he was trying to claim ownership of facts (something you can't do). Furthermore, his claims of plagiarism were undermined by the very fact that he admitted that competing biographer Rick Perlstein's quotes were different. Shirley claimed that "difference" in the quotes showed that Perlstein was trying to cover up the plagiarism, but... that makes no sense.

Of course, when the NY Times reported on this, it did the "he said/she said" thing, providing no enlightenment whatsoever to the public who was reading it about whose argument actually was legit, and whose was ridiculous. Reporter Alexandra Alter played the false equivalence card:

Mr. Perlstein, 44, suggested that the attack on his book is partly motivated by conservatives’ discomfort with his portrayal of Reagan. Mr. Shirley is president and chief executive of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, which represents conservative clients like Citizens United and Ann Coulter.

But Mr. Shirley and his lawyer contend that Mr. Perlstein paraphrased original research without properly giving credit. “The rephrasing of words without proper attribution is still plagiarism,” Mr. Shirley said in an interview.

As Rosen notes, this is the "easy" way out for a journalist. Actually figuring out who's right takes work, and hell, you might be wrong. So why take the risk:

You’re safer because you could be wrong if you choose, so why choose? You’re safer because even if you’re not wrong you can be accused of bias, and who needs that? You’re safer because people will always argue about [fill in some bitterly contested narrative here] and you don’t want to be a contestant in that. In the middle is safe. Neither/nor is safe. Not having a view of the matter is safe… Right?

But, as Rosen notes, thanks to the internet these days, newspapers are increasingly having trouble with this kind of lazy "safe" journalism. Because the public will call them out when they avoid reporting the truth, favoring a false narrative instead. In this case, the NYT's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, (whose job it is to examine whether or not the NY Times is best serving the public) called the paper out for this weak effort in response to complaints from the public. She directly notes the problem of this he said/she said journalism:

By taking it seriously, The Times conferred a legitimacy on the accusation it would not otherwise have had.

And while it is true that Mr. Perlstein and his publisher were given plenty of opportunity to respond, that doesn’t help much. It’s as if The Times is saying: “Here’s an accusation; here’s a denial; and, heck, we don’t really know. We’re staying out of it.” Readers frequently complain to me about this he said, she said false equivalency — and for good reason.

So I’m with the critics. The Times article amplified a damaging accusation of plagiarism without establishing its validity and doing so in a way that is transparent to the reader. The standard has to be higher.

As Rosen further points out in his blog post, the ability of the public to weigh in may be changing the equation here. The "easy" and "lazy" response of just doing he said/she said journalism won't cut it because you'll get called out on it. Journalism should be about reporting what's true, not just what people say is true. The continued use of he said/she said is actually "reckless behavior that may easily blow up in its face." Rosen even points out that the BBC is now specifically retraining its reporters to stop inserting "false balance" into stories where there's an underlying truth and an attempt to distort it. It seems amazing that this even needs to be repeated, but it's been that way for so long in many publications.

Hopefully, the ability of the public to call it out will make more lazy journalists and editors recognize what used to be the "safe" move is no longer so safe.

from the step-on-up dept

As we recently explained, the type of reporting we do isn't always conducive to advertising support -- in fact, our work on the SOPA fight caused us to lose a significant amount of revenue, and the blog itself operates at a loss. Earlier this month we announced that we were running a crowdfunding campaign on BeaconReader to fund our net neutrality coverage in particular -- as that's another subject that deserves deep-dive coverage, and which traditional advertisers don't want to go anywhere near. One of the great things about working with BeaconReader was that they were able to line up matching funds, so that every donation to us is automatically doubled by the matching donors. Today we're happy to announce that the first two matching donors have been revealed as Twitch and Namecheap -- two companies that are dedicated to preserving an open and free internet, and who wanted to support our coverage in this way, by multiplying the impact of anyone who donates. We're also announcing that Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has backed our project as an "Event Sponsor," for a net neutrality salon that we'll be holding later this year.

We're excited to have this support, and just as excited to see so many of you step up to back the project as well. We're about a week away and there's still a long way to go, but the initial support has been fantastic. If you enjoy what we do, and would like to see it continue (and go deeper and be more involved), please consider backing the project in the next week and thank Twitch and Namecheap for immediately doubling the impact of your support. If we succeed, we'll be able to devote more time and resources to our net neutrality reporting, including bringing in additional voices, meeting with key players, and just generally spending more time digging into the details of this important topic -- rather than having to spend it convincing advertisers that, no, we don't want to force a giant annoying video to play on the site before you can read anything, because that's not how we treat our community. It's great that Twitch and NameCheap were willing to step up via BeaconReader, to show their commitment to dedicated, independent reporting on these important topics.

from the NOTHING-works-that-way,-especially-not-the-internet dept

When information, that is meant to be confidential, leaks, there's seldom any way to gracefully "recover" the wandering document(s). You can certainly ask those who've posted it to take it down, but it's highly unlikely you'll be able to do anything more than hope they'll acquiesce. You can, however, use this same, slim window of opportunity to make things worse, like Digital First Media's lawyer, David Barlow, did.

Jim Romenesko had someone leak him a copy of an internal email detailing upcoming staff cuts. The memo, which broke down employees into "cut," "keep" and "maybe" categories, was circulated to 15 other employees by Digital First's CTO, Bob Mason. One of those passed it on to Romenesko and he posted it at his website.

Although the cold impartiality of technology makes this seem unusually cruel, there's really nothing inherently worse about this method than any other way execs determine staff cuts. Usually, though, they don't have their internal decisions circulated widely via a journalistic enterprise. Romenesko spoke to another executive at Digital First who refused to confirm anything about the memo other than the fact that the leak caused a serious breach of the involved employees' privacy. This executive (Chief Executive John Patton) did not, however, comment on the issue of Mason circulating a cut list via email.

That could have been the end of that. A temporary embarrassment and a strong warning to people like Bob Mason to handle sensitive documents more carefully. Instead of dealing with the fallout of employees being prematurely notified of their employment status, DFM decided to let a lawyer handle it.

This letter demands that you immediately remove from your website and return the information concerning possible proprietary and confidential employee matters misappropriated from Digital First Media. Nothing in this letter should be understood to confirm the accuracy of your publication.

DFM's lawyer can certainly ask for Romenesko to remove the posted information (but shouldn't really expect compliance) but he can't honestly expect him to "return" the posted document. The internet doesn't work that way. For that matter, this isn't even just a matter of confused Luddic thinking. Had Romenesko been in the old publication business (newspapers, magazines) and published the memo, it would have been just as ridiculous for the company to ask for the "return" of the document. It's already been published. Even if Romenesko had honored Barlow's request, cached versions and the Internet Archive would have preserved it, just as surely as every issued newspaper/magazine would have back in the pre-Internet days. In fact, the demand for the return of originals has become increasingly meaningless with every iteration of duplication technology. Using it now is just inordinately stupid, but delivering that phrase 30 or 40 years ago would have only been slightly less imbecilic.

It also must be noted that there are nicer ways to ask for compliance. The phrase, "it's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar" exists for a reason. (Of course, you can't ignore this cynical rejoinder, delivered by the incomparable and much missed Phil Hartman in his role as newscaster Bill McNeal in Newsradio: "Only a hillbilly sits around and tries to figure out the best way to catch flies.") But again, there's only a small chance this request will be complied with. But adding a threatening tone almost universally guarantees that the request will be ignored, especially when it's clear the asking party has absolutely no legal recourse and is simply trying to bury something embarrassing.

All Barlow succeeded in doing is drawing more attention to Romenesko's original post and, in the process, highlighting upper management's absurd response to a situation it partially created. Sure, some employee likely violated a company policy on internal documents, but when lists of staff cuts are being passed around, the fear of losing one's job is greatly diminished and the urge to stick it to untouched upper levels of the organization chart -- especially if you're already on your way out the door -- is too irresistible to ignore.

It's time to accept the reality. You can't control the narrative, not anymore, or at least, not at the level you used to be able to. Running around closing barn doors using your lawyer just makes you look even more callous and self-interested than the original memo did.

from the a-bit-of-spin-and-you-can-make-anything-look-evil dept

As you may have heard, there's been some hubbub this week about claims that YouTube is going to remove some videos from indie musicians/labels who don't agree to the contract terms for YouTube's upcoming music subscription service. Ellen Huet, over at Forbes, has a good article explaining how this isn't as dire as some are making it out to be, but the more I'm digging into it, it seems even less than that. There's no doubt that this is a royalty dispute, with some indie labels upset about the basic terms that Google is offering, but, if you haven't noticed, the complaints seem to be coming from the same folks who complain about the royalty rates of every single online music service. There are some people who will just never be satisfied. Furthermore, the deeper you dig into this, it becomes quite clear that any artist who wants to have their videos on YouTube can continue to do that.

Here's the main issue: YouTube, which has long been the most popular place for people to find and listen to music, is about to launch some sort of premium subscription service. This has been rumored for ages, and it's expected to build a Spotify-like service on top of YouTube's existing content. As part of this, YouTube is going around and negotiating royalty deals with labels and artists, most of which have signed on. This is providing a new revenue stream to those artists. Currently, for artists on YouTube, they're only able to make a cut of advertising revenue (which isn't that much) via YouTube's Partner program. By launching a premium subscription service, YouTube is adding a brand new revenue stream, which by all accounts will pay noticeably better than the current partner offering. Just as Spotify pays more to artists when a "subscriber" streams a song than when an ad-supported user streams a song, it appears that YouTube will do the same.

Now, the one big sticking point is the removal of certain videos. While Huet points out that there are very, very few videos likely to be impacted by this, it is likely to still hit a few. And, that's why it's quite reasonable to look at that and have the gut reaction: "that's bullying" or "that's unfair." It's even easier to try to spin it, as some critics have, as Google threatening people who don't agree to the royalties that it's offering. But where things appear to have been muddied is in understanding what is meant by "removing" the videos. As far as we can tell, Google is just saying it will remove those videos from its partner program. YouTube is an open platform. Anyone can go and upload videos for free. Any musician who wants their video on the platform can do so for free. However, for videos that are already in the partner program, if they reject the new deal (which, again, is better than the existing deal), Google will no longer have a license to host that video as a part of its partner program, so that copy may be removed because the artist has effectively pulled its license from YouTube to host it. The musicians and labels can still go back and re-upload their own videos -- it's just that they've chosen not to monetize the video at all by joining the partner program. You could argue that Google could just "move" the video from the partner program to outside the partner program, but then these same folks would probably try to spin it as Google infringing on their copyrights by hosting their videos without a license...

Put yourself in the shoes of the indie band here. Under the existing system, you can "monetize" your videos by getting a cut of the tiny ad revenue that comes in from each view. From what everyone says, unless you're absolutely huge, the money just isn't that great. Such is the nature of online advertising these days. But the new offering gives you a cut of subscription revenue also, which is likely to be higher. So, now, as an indie band, the options are: take Google's music streaming deal, which is better than the crappy ad share deal you're currently getting or... have your video removed from YouTube's partner program.

In short: before, you had two options:

Post your video and monetize it via YouTube's partner program with a bit of ad revenue.

Post your video and don't monetize it.

And now you'll have these two options:

Post your video and monetize it via YouTube's partner program with a bit of ad revenue and some subscription revenue

Post your video and don't monetize it.

And, somehow, the same folks who complain about every music service are spinning this second option as some sort of insult, even though it's better than the existing options. It takes some kind of special level of bullshit to argue that a company offering to improve your deal is doing something bad.

Sure, perhaps it's fair game to argue that the new deal isn't good enough for a subscription service, but it's difficult to see how acts are complaining that their videos will be taken out of the partner program when the existing deal is even worse. So, basically, Google is offering these labels a better deal than before, and it's being attacked because it's removing the option for the old not so good deal. It's a little difficult to see how that's a fair complaint. After all, YouTube has given these artists a massive, powerful and robust platform to put their videos up for free with no bandwidth costs at all, and even given them a variety of monetization options, from ad shares to linking people to buy MP3s and such. And now it's removing one option while adding a better paying option... But a few indie labels are spinning it negatively because they want an even better deal. And maybe the royalty rates they want are justified. But to present this as somehow hurting those indie artists just seems to be pure spin.

Hell, go back to the time before YouTube, and think about the deal that indie artists had if they wanted to put videos online? They would have to pay through the nose for something like a Real Video Server, then pay for all the bandwidth, and then know that it was still almost impossible for anyone to watch the video. Then YouTube came along and made it both easy and free for anyone to put their videos online, plus build a large community of people who want to watch those videos, and then added ways to monetize those videos. Now, YouTube is adding another way to monetize those videos even more, and the artists are suddenly claiming it's an attack on them? Yikes.

The latest trend is that the agriculture industry is even trying to ban photographs of farms taken from the air. It is unlikely that aerial photography can document animal abuse, but these industries are clearly concerned. So what are factory farms trying to hide? Will a drone allow us to see the scope of pollution caused by these industrial operations? I'm going to find out...

As Potter notes, it's not clear what evidence of animal abuse a drone will be able to gather, but it's both an interesting attempt to circumvent ag-gag laws that seem to have no rationale other than covering up abuses, and another example of drones being used in innovative -- and peaceful -- ways.

from the security-through-obtusity dept

James Clapper's order forbidding both current and former employees from discussing almost anything with the media has raised more questions than it's answered. It appears to have been written as a response to the Snowden leaks (as well as various unnamed officials' responses to those leaks), but its restrictiveness does nothing to prevent document leaking and has created a whole lot of confusion.

To begin with, the very definition of media/press is impossible to pin down. According to the original order, anything from major networks to officials' own social media accounts were off limits. A clarification issued shortly thereafter offered nearly nothing in the way of clearing things up.

One former intelligence official who now works in the private sector said he declined five recent requests to discuss national security issues on television news shows because he was afraid of having his security clearance revoked or being fined for breaking the rules. Ironically, the former official said, he only learned about new restrictions on talking to the press from Gen. Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency, when he discussed it with comedian John Oliver for his new HBO talk show.

Much like many legislators and government officials learned of the NSA's activities from outside sources, former officials are learning more about a policy affecting their press interactions from other former officials interacting with the press.

Meanwhile, Clapper's office claims this policy has always been in place, despite the reactions that clearly indicate otherwise. It also should be noted that this "there all along" policy hasn't prevented various unnamed intelligence officials -- some of them still currently employed -- from offering their opinions on the NSA's programs over the past several months.

It also hasn't prevented former NSA head Michael Hayden from acting as the agency's biggest cheerleader, apparently appearing at any press venue that will have him.

Several sources cited Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA, as a prime example. Hayden writes a regular column for the Washington Times. Does that mean Hayden is now a journalist, some former officials asked? If so, are they prohibited from talking to him, too?

Spokespeople for the agency claim Hayden runs everything by the agency first, but if that's true (something that seems unlikely given the number of appearances, including a live debate with NSA critics), that makes him the minority. Other former officials claim that if Clapper's going to pretend this policy isn't new, they'll just continue to route around his office, just as they did before the supposedly "not new" policy went into force.

The former intelligence official who said he first learned of the policy by watching HBO said he's reluctant to call Clapper's office because he thinks it'll only invite more scrutiny. Another said that until he hears otherwise, he will continue to clear articles through his former agency, not the ODNI. And, he predicted, his colleagues will do the same.

The policy, which "isn't new" but still comes as a surprise to many former officials, is typical of the NSA's responses over the past several months -- long on indignant righteous fury and short on substance. That this supposedly pre-existing policy needed both a clarification and a declaration that nothing has ever changed is also indicative of the agency's clumsy attempts to embrace transparency place one tentative arm a few inches above transparency's shoulder: needlessly convoluted and ultimately useless.

from the morally-pointless dept

Google's Adsense1 team has apparently decided that it is the morality police and that this 2012 story we wrote, about a lawsuit involving a porn star and the rapper Bow Wow, is somehow improper and a violation of Google's high moral standards. The story involves no nudity or porn. It's about how the porn star Katsuni (aka Celine Tran) was suing Bow Wow because a video for one of his songs used a bunch of video clips -- allegedly without permission -- from a music video by a different band (Electronic Conspiracy), which included video of Katsuni pole dancing. We noted it that wasn't a copyright case, because Katsuni doesn't hold the copyright, but rather she filed a publicity rights claim over the use of her image in the Bow Wow video. In other words: it was a fairly standard Techdirt news story on a legal dispute involving intellectual property. We embedded the two videos, which seemed rather important to demonstrating how the videos were similar -- the key issue at play in the lawsuit. We further noted that there was no nudity in either video, but they did show pole dancing, which might not be entirely safe for work, depending on your workplace environment.

A week ago, we received an email from the AdSense sales team, forwarding an email from the AdSense "policy team," saying that the ads on this page violated AdSense's policies, and that we had three days to stop monetizing the page or our account would be shut down. The specific concern was that AdSense's policy includes this:

Google ads may not be placed on pages with adult or mature content. This includes, but is not limited to, pages with images or videos containing:

Strategically covered nudity

Sheer or see-through clothing

Lewd or provocative poses

Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

We immediately appealed the decision, noting the ridiculousness of the claim. It was clearly a news story, not "adult" content. One of the videos in question was even hosted on YouTube and had Google ads enabled on that video. In fact, we've since discovered that both of the videos in question are on YouTube and have Google ads. You can see the original video here and the Bow Wow video here. Both of them are monetized by YouTube with Google ads. And yet, somehow we're the ones violating Google's policies?

We got back a short note yesterday, telling us that our appeal was rejected and we needed to remove ads from that page immediately. Here was the entire explanation:

It looks like the video in question is fairly suggestive (ie there is a picture of a stripper pole) . I would not consider this instance a false positive, please ask the publisher to stop monetizing.

Note the vague standard being used: "fairly suggestive." And also the impeccable level of scrutiny employed: "looks like." Yippee for such a data driven analysis.

Again, this was on a news story about the copying between the videos, and the very same videos are found on YouTube where they are both monetized by Google's ads. Furthermore, it's not as though Google shies away from ads involving strippers. Here's a Google search I just did (which I may now need to explain to my wife, should she look at my history):

So, what possible purpose does this serve? Since we weren't set up to deal with deleting ads on specific pages like this, we had to have two people waste much of their time yesterday figuring out how to remove ads from a page that got less than 50 pageviews over the last year, just to please the ridiculous morality police at Google AdSense, who have a problem with a news report embedding a video that they themselves are monetizing on YouTube.

To put it simply: this is idiotic. Yes, Google has the right to make its own decisions about what it will allow ads on, but you would hope that there was at least some common sense employed. While we (thankfully!) aren't reliant on these ads as our main source of revenue, the whole situation is ridiculous. You could see how other news sites might even change their own reporting to avoid having to deal with such ridiculous and arbitrary policies from Google's nameless morality police.

For our part, we've actually been hard at work for a couple months now on some new sponsorship opportunities that we're increasingly hoping would let us do away with display advertising altogether. Before this we thought maybe the two could co-exist but, frankly, I'd love to just dump AdSense from the site outright at this point, given this sort of intrusion. If you work for a company that would like to be loved by our community for helping us to get rid of display advertising altogether, while also providing great content to a great and engaged audience, contact us ASAP. Alternatively, for individuals, feel free to support us over at the Insider Shop, where we've got some lovely items and services for sale.

Separately, because people will likely bring it up, about a month ago, a story made the rounds about a big conspiracy within Google to cut off AdSense users after they'd accumulated a fairly large amount of revenue due, allowing Google to then keep that revenue. The story seemed far-fetched, because even just some quick back of the envelope calculations would call into question how such a program could possibly make sense. Google would be cutting off revenue earning partners to "steal" one month's worth of revenue? How could that possibly make sense? Either way, Google quickly and convincingly denied the whole thing. And it's unlikely our situation has anything to do with that story, anyway.

That said, Google is somewhat infamous for arbitrarily cutting sites off with little to no warning or explanation. There are tons of reports of people who suddenly had their AdSense accounts shut down with basically no recourse whatsoever. Just a week or so ago, the company Free Range Content (disclosure: which provides the "Repost.us" syndication technology we use on our site) filed an interesting lawsuit after having its own AdSense account shut off. The details of that story seemed particularly bizarre. Free Range Content had actually noticed odd behavior with the account itself and alerted Google to the issue, specifically noting that its revenue seemed way too high for the given period. Someone on Google's AdSense team agreed to meet with Free Range Content, but two days before the meeting the entire account was shut down, and Google refused to give any explanation or present any recourse at all. At least we were given a heads up and a (absolutely ridiculous) reason.

Given stories like this, you can certainly see why people get so frustrated and fearful about the power that Google potentially has. Just the fact that there's an implication that we should change what we report on just to keep ads on our site seems immensely troubling. The fact that Google's AdSense policy team stood by the decision after we appealed suggests a broken process. While it seems likely this is a case of sheer and utter incompetence rather than malevolence, you can see why some people fear companies like Google.

1. A little background on Techdirt and AdSense: While we had experimented on and off with Google AdSense over the years, a few years ago we completely took them off the site (2011, I think), in part because of another ad relationship we had, but also because we found the performance to be abysmal. Just a few months ago, a sales team at AdSense made a very aggressive push to get us to start using it again, insisting that the performance would be much better and sending over "predicted revenue" that was significantly higher than we were getting at that time. We were skeptical, but also frustrated and annoyed with our existing ad provider, who all too frequently let through awful and obnoxious low quality ads (that we had to have someone monitoring constantly to remove), despite promises to keep them off our site. After running some tests, and realizing that Google clearly was very much overselling what AdSense could do, we still agreed to switch, in large part because the other solution we were using was so bad, we figured even if the payouts were similar, at least the experience would be marginally better. The terms of our deal forbid us from revealing how much we make from AdSense, but it's really not that much. We're basically covering our bandwidth bills. We're not making any profit from it at all, but we've kept it around to keep from flat out losing money on our hosting bills. ↩